Swords, stewardesses, and stimulus packages

Corbett | November 14, 2008 10:20 AM

Sitting on a flight up to Beijing, a stewardess hands me the China Daily, and the first headline I see is, "Nannies hit by financial crisis." I look up to see the attractive stewardess dressed in a Swedish au pair costume being spanked by the captain using a ping-pong paddle with the words "financial crisis" written on it. Wait a second...this crisis stuff is getting to me. Too many reports.

Reading through the article I come across what is probably the quote of the year by a 27-year-old Ding Ting, who has a "demanding" job working for a multinational company.

"The possibility of being made redundant has been a sword of Damocles hanging over me since the crisis broke..."

OK, I speak fairly good English but I just could not imagine ever using the terms "possibility of being made redundant" and "sword of Damocles" in one sentence. For this Ding Ting gets my vote for quote of the year by a (I am assuming) non-native English speaker.

Then the next day I'm reading "A Tour of the Stimulus Package and Beyond" by Victor Shih, a political economist at Northwestern University, who posts some amazing insights into the banking and political environment in China. Under the context of the possibility that the government might set up a special fund to buy up failing Chinese stocks, he says, "...If the stock market is allowed to continue, then it will operate under the sword of Damocles as participants wonder when the government will sell the shares back to the public."

Oh no, not the sword again. Damn, the sword has come up twice in two days, and I can't fully remember the source of the idiom, so I go online to refresh my memory from my high school classics course with Dr. Ton. I of course was not paying any attention to Dr. Ton, instead focusing my nascent intellect on how to get laid at junior prom.

I missed the whole Cicero section of Dr. Ton's class, probably thinking about Cecelia instead, but a quick Google search reminds me that Damocles, the court sycophant under Dionysius, is asked by the king if he wants to trade places. Damocles agrees of course, but finds that there is a sword dangling by a horse hair over his head.

OK, now I get it.

Category: Mr. Asia

Comments (2)

Comments

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JohnG

November 14, 2008 11:45 AM

I wonder if "sword of Damocles" was used to replace a Chinese idiom that foreigners would not understand.

J.

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corbett

November 14, 2008 12:15 PM

Well, there's a couple, but I never find an opportunity to use Chinese idioms without sounding like a dork. This site (http://www.nciku.com/search/en/detail/sword%20of%20Damocles/1284803) says that 大祸临头 and 岌岌可危 are similar, but this focuses more on the precariousness, hanging by a thread aspect, rather than the "try wearing my shoes for a while" theme also present in Damocles.

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